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European alternatives asset manager Reech AiM has turned its back on the Ucits fund market, six months after saying it was hiring more sales people to cover it, as part of a fundamental restructuring of its business.

Reech AiM, founded by the eponymous Christophe Reech in 2006 and regarded as innovative, will focus on a pair of strategies that it will sell to investors other than those in the retail market.

The firm uses quantitative investment and risk management techniques to invest in the entire range of real estate investment vehicles, an approach that the company calls “quantitative real estate”. Reech, the chairman and chief executive of the firm, told Financial News: “I don’t know anyone else who does it.”

The second strategy on which Reech AiM is focusing is managed futures, a computer-driven hedge fund strategy.

Reech AiM, which has $200m under management, is terminating its Asia-Pacific equities and US long/short strategies, and closing its Singapore office. Reech said the firm has appointed a new client services director and a new sales team, and was hiring a real estate private equity team.

In April, Financial News reported that Reech AiM had halved its FSA-registered staff to eight, despite a £530,000 capital injection from Christophe Reech, while the accounts of Reech AiM Partners showed that the firm, which has never made a profit, had made a loss of £2.8m in 2010.

Reech told Financial News in April: “A certain number of people in the institutional sales have been asked to leave, because the institutional business was difficult and we are hiring more sales people to cover the Ucits fund market.”

However, last week Reech told Financial News that Reech AiM was going to withdraw from the Ucits market and close its funds, White Tiger and Magnetic.

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He said: “We are withdrawing from Ucits because it has not delivered what we expected for alternative funds. The Ucits structure has not attracted sufficient interest from investors. It is better for us to go back to our roots.”

He added that the decision was influenced by the increasing cost of regulation, in every jurisdiction in which the company operates.

Reech said: “This is the last phase of a transformation of the Group which began earlier this year. The current investor environment is extremely challenging, but by concentrating our efforts on the core areas of expertise, I am confident that we can deliver uncorrelated consistent investment returns for clients and grow assets under management, while exploring opportunities for developing new products.”

The firm is based in London, but its corporate headquarters is in Luxembourg.